


Drawing Days Out

by buttercups3



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Loss, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-06
Updated: 2013-07-11
Packaged: 2017-12-17 20:20:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/871576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buttercups3/pseuds/buttercups3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bass gets the news about the car crash, and the boys go home for the funeral. A Miles and Bass friendship piece.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, some of you know that I lost a dear friend to suicide this week. I've spent all my waking hours with his widow, and all my sleeping hours not sleeping. So I started this story to deal with my stuff through writing, because it's the only way I know how. Un-betaed and written by a really tired person. Apologies.
> 
> "That we shall die we know; 'tis but the time  
> And drawing days out, that men stand upon."  
> William Shakespeare, Julius Ceasar

Miles can tell something is wrong, like the world has caught a hitch trying to spin in its axis, stealing away the collective breath of all Earthlings. Sitting straight-backed on his cot at base, Bass isn’t facing Miles, and Miles can’t hear the words being spoken through the cell phone, but he is sure something is wrong.

“I’m sorry. Can you repeat that?” Bass’s voice sounds foreign, heavy and watery as the South Carolina air this time of year. “But…all of them?”

Miles feels himself drifting over to Bass’s bedside and sits next to him, waiting. Bass hangs up and the phone trails out of his fingers, almost casually. But there’s nothing casual about what he says next.

“My family is dead.”

Miles’s brain cannot input this data. So he asks, “What?” Or he thinks he’s managed to ask. It comes out like a choke.

“They were on the way to a Harry Potter movie, and a drunk driver slammed into their car.” 

“But…Angie? Cynthia?”

“All of them.”

Miles is watching Bass watch the wall, the blue eyes unfocused like they’re trying to see into the plane where his family is, because they’re no longer on this one.

Miles is perfectly numb. He has no hands, no feet, no nothing in between. Though he appears to have a head still, and it feels cumbersome, inconveniently so. It wobbles; it lolls. His unconscionably heavy brain tries to tell his hand to move to Bass’s shoulder. To comfort him. The hand appears to object, or in any case, it doesn’t do what it’s told. 

The brain tells the hand: You’re Bass’s best friend. You’ve been training your whole life to be here for him when tragedy strikes. Now that that moment has come, Miles must swing into action – play the caped hero. He’s got to inform their lieutenant, figure out their route home, arrange the funeral. And he still hasn’t moved a muscle.

Perhaps saying something will serve as ignition. 

“I’m…I”

Bass’s lip trembles in response. “Miles…how can this…?” 

Miles is finally able to take Bass’s hand, though he feels like he has to move his arm through a particularly stubborn jelly mold to get there. “I’m going to…I’ll tell the LT that we’re going to need some leave.” Miles squeezes the dead weight. 

* * *

It’s a fourteen-hour drive from Parris Island, and under better circumstances, Miles might have been able to make it in one day. But they didn’t sleep the night before, and Miles has felt the wheels of the Challenger migrating off the road for the last hour. He doesn’t even think to ask Bass if he’d like a turn at driving, because Bass’s eyes have scarcely blinked in nine hours. Neither man has uttered a word – not when Miles stopped at a gas station for gas and a piss, not when he stopped at a McDonalds for a coffee.

Miles checks them into a Economy Lodge outside of Lexington, Kentucky, while Bass looms hyperactively in the corner behind him. The desk clerk eyes them like they’re here for cheap sex or a drug deal. Miles just snatches the keys wearily and leads Bass by the arm to their room.

“Why don’t you grab a shower?” Miles suggests.

After he watches Bass fumble with his shirt like he’s got paws instead of opposable thumbs, Miles finally yanks the resistant sleeve off of Bass’s right arm for him. Once Miles hears the rush of water, signaling Bass has accomplished basic hygiene, Miles tries to sit and let his mind relax. He thinks: Gail is dead. Gail, my second mother – my _living_ mother. Not alive. I’ll never see her again. Never lift Angela onto my shoulders or watch Cynthia giggle at me, hamstrung by her ridiculously epic crush on me.

He shakes it off. Thankfully, a fresh wave of numbness envelopes him.

The clerk has alotted them two queen beds, but when Bass curls shakily into the fetal position, sobbing, Miles decides he can’t leave him alone – not even five feet away. Miles enircles Bass with his body and hugs him tight.

Bass bites his lip and sobs some more, while Miles just holds him, tears burning his eyes. He won’t let them fall. The more Bass feels like he could blast apart into his components, the harder Miles squeezes.

After awhile, the shuddering begins to slow (not stop), and Bass blubbers and laughs, “Man, this is so gay.”

Miles sniffs and says seriously, “Yeah, well no one’s here to see us, Bass. Just go to sleep.”

Hours later they’ve shifted around to lie side by side.

“You asleep?” comes Bass’s shallow, lonely voice. 

“No.” 

“I just keep going through it: Them planning in advance the movie, the popcorn, the Junior Mints, because Cyn fucking loves – loved – Junior Mints; they get in the car, they drive into the intersection on their green light and bam – they’re pulp. I go over and over it in my mind trying to produce a different outcome, but it’s always the same. Why can’t I stop it? What good is it doing me?”

“None. But I can’t stop it either.” Miles shifts his cheek to the pillow to stare at Bass’s profile.

“I just…I alternate between being certain this is a dream and overwhelmed by the reality.” 

Miles puts his hand on top of Bass’s.

“How do you live through something like this, man?” Bass’s voice hinges on hysterical, but he reels it back from the brink.

“I have no idea.”

By first light, Miles estimates he’s gotten two hours of sleep, Bass…probably zero. Miles almost feels guilty that he’s gotten any respite from the suffering at all, as if being physically and mentally present allows Miles to carry some of Bass’s burden. But who is he kidding? He can’t take any of it away for Bass. Miles can hurt alongside him, around him, but he can’t relieve Bass of one damn drop of agony.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, as it turns out, this story is just a feelings dump after a really terrible week. I'm done with it (at least for now - perhaps I'll come back to it at a later time). This chapter is from Bass's p.o.v. I mean, really, Bass is a bad guy on the show - but who could deal well with what he went through in a healthy way?

Bass is grateful that to beat one’s heart requires no conscious effort; he’s having enough trouble with the breathing thing and that’s supposed to come naturally as well. He alternates between concentrating terribly hard on breathing and then forgetting to breathe and choking. Miles shoots him a concerned glance from the driver seat every so often. Bass feels almost hysterically grateful for Miles, and so every now and then he mutters, “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” and Miles responds gently, “Shhh. Come on, man. It's nothing. There’s no where I’d rather be.”

When they pull up to the perfect picture of suburban America – Bass's parents’ home with its picket fence, its roses, its shuttered windows – he feels like his heart will fail too. Miles parks and looks at him.

“Do you want to stay in a hotel outside of town, Bass? If this is too…well, I get it.”

Of course they’ll stay at the Monroe residence. Miles’s mother has been long dead, his father moved to Florida years ago, and Ben’s in Chicago. They have nowhere else to go. It’s Bass’s house now anyway, technically.

Bass shakes his head through the molasses he feels suspended in and dazedly points at the front porch. Because there are Ben and Rachel with a car seat (no doubt occupied by their sickly premie, fresh home from the NICU) and their daughter Charlotte running around on the front lawn. They look like they’re here to stay, too, if one were to judge by the pile of bags lumped next to them.

Bass is too tired to take stock of Miles, but he can feel the tension emanate from his best friend like an electromagnetic field. Miles and Rachel haven’t talked in months, because Rachel has asked Miles not to call. They have a nasty habit of knocking boots when they see each other. Bass doesn’t quite understand the attraction to the prissy, judgmental Rachel, but inexplicably Rachel's and Miles's on again off again affair almost makes Bass jealous. He’s certainly not glad Ben and Rachel have decided to make an apperance here. He and Miles can handle this and anything else life throws at them _alone_.

When Bass gets out of the car they approach.

Rachel explains, “We heard, Bass. We’re so sorry.”

She embraces him tightly and kisses his cheek. Bass wishes he had a control panel inside of him on which he could push buttons – frowny face, smiley face, hahaha, thanks for the condolences – but alas, he’s only got his shriveled little malfunctioning brain to rely upon. Bass looks blankly at Miles for help.

Miles’s mouth begins moving, so Bass decides it’s safe to flee. He doesn’t want to see the Matheson clan attempt to navigate each other. Bass and Miles still aren't sure if Ben even knows about the affair.

In a moment Bass is inside his childhood home with all the evidence of a living family – spaghetti leftovers in the fridge, a girly magazine thrown carelessly open on the coffee table, shoes scattered where feet discarded them.

It’s only four in the afternoon, but Bass goes immediately up to his room, kicks off his shoes, and lies on his side to sleep. Hours later, he wakes up screaming.

Miles’s arms are around him so fast, he doesn’t even know where his friend has come from.

“Shh,” Miles comforts.

Bass’s eyelashes are heavy with tears, and he buries his face in Miles’s neck, sobbing. Bass wonders if he’ll ever regain even mild control over his body.

Miles tells him, "I've got you, Bass. I've got you."

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much to those who have sent me well wishes. *hugs*


End file.
